Last month, a coalition of West Coast fishermen filed a suit against thirty of the world’s major oil companies in California Superior Court seeking damages for the latter having allegedly undermined the Dungeness crab fishery via climate change; the suit alleges Big Oil knew about the dangers of climate change for decades, but actively decided the public and decision makers.
The head of the organization that filed the suit, Noah Oppenheim, is a 31-year old scientist from Maine who grew up in Falmouth and did his graduate work at the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center. I wrote on how he found his way to the middle of this high-profile law suit in this week’s Maine Sunday Telegram. Enjoy.
I wrote on two other Mainers at the center of national news — Interior Department whistleblower Joel Clement and Russia expert Kyle Parker — in the Press Herald recently.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.